The Moreau Quartet, Volume 2

by S. Andrew Swann

  She could also see the Japanese writing on some of the panels, and a very understated Toshiba logo on the sides of the rectangular sections.

  “Jesus, is that a Japanese mainframe?”

  Mr. K snorted. “Mainframes are for payrolls— That’s a Toshiba OS 3000.”

  “I thought that kind of stuff was fried when they lost the war.”

  “You can’t destroy technology, only hide it a while.”

  Angel stopped at the foot of the stairs, looking at the Jap computer. “How the hell did you get one?”

  “Quite simple. I imported it myself, before the war.”

  “But wasn’t that—”

  “Oh, highly illegal and a major threat to Japanese national security. Especially with someone trained to use it to its full capabilities. If I was caught, they would have shot me for a traitor.” Mr. K pulled gently on her arm and pointed to a door halfway along the curving wall. “My office, I believe we have things to discuss.”

  Angel allowed herself to be led to the office. Seeing that large a chunk of Japanese technology in one piece, in working order, had stunned her. Angel knew that a lot of the stories of Jap technology had to be so much bullshit and wishful thinking, but there was still a mythic quality about the stuff the island nation had done with silicon, superconductors, nanotechnology, biological interfaces . . .

  The only real problem with old Jap technology was that there was only so much it could do when the Japanese faced an army ten times the size of its own. The Chinese lack of pinpoint accuracy didn’t much matter when they lobbed a ten-meg warhead.

  What the hell could that Toshiba do? It was probably more powerful than some of the stuff that was buried in the Pentagon.

  Angel went straight from that and into free fall. At least that was what it felt like, walking into Mr. K’s office.

  When the door opened in front of her, she suffered dizzying vertigo caused by the gigantic holo screen behind the desk. The screen was on, projecting a screen of solid sky-blue. It was as if she found herself falling upward.

  She blinked a few times and the feeling passed.

  The door closed behind her, leaving the frank guard outside. Mr. K sat himself behind the desk and motioned her toward a chair that was a single flat piece of upholstered plastic that had been molded into a chair shape. It didn’t look stable, but she sat in it without tipping it over.

  “So,” Mr. K said, leaning back in his chair and looking at her over the top of his glasses—his eyes were a deep violet—“what can we do for each other?”

  Angel began to relay the story, but he stopped her. “I’m quite familiar with the basics. Sometimes the news services can produce something . . . enlightening. I would like to know your needs—your specific needs.”

  Angel thought about that.

  “I need to know who killed Byron and who’s been trashing apartments.”

  “And to what end?”

  “I need to know what the hell Byron was doing.” Angel pulled the football tickets out of her pocket and tossed them on the desk. “And I need to know what, if anything he hid on those ramcards.”

  Mr. K nodded. “Good. I like specifics. Now we need to discuss the terms of this exchange.”

  “Huh?”

  “My payment, Angelica. I came to this country because I do not work for free.”

  “Oh, if you tell me how much you—”

  He clucked and shook his head. “No, no, you can’t afford to pay me money.”

  Angel grinned slightly. “I do have some money—”

  He nodded. “Something under seven million I suspect.”

  Angel gaped.

  “Perhaps you see now. I deal with corporations for the most part, only the very rare individual. Computer time on my machine is effectively priceless. Conservatively, it’s fifty-thousand a minute.”

  She closed her mouth slowly.

  “However, I do not deal only in—or even primarily in—money.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want free access to whatever information he was transporting.” He reached over with incredibly long fingers and rested them on top of the cards. “Acceptable?”

  Angel looked down at the season tickets under Mr. K’s hand. “What makes you think he was carrying anything?”

  Mr. K smiled. “I knew him.”

  Of course. Why the fuck not? It wasn’t like she ever actually knew the damn fox. She just let the vulpine bastard seduce her into this mess.

  “What do you think he was transporting?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Angel shook her head and snickered. “You’d do this for something that might turn out to be worthless?”

  “It is valuable to someone, which means it is valuable to me. Sometimes I take a low-risk gamble.”

  “Okay,” Angel said. She really didn’t care what Byron was transporting, what she wanted to know was what that information could tell her about whoever was fucking with her life.

  Mr. K picked up the series of ramcards.

  However, Angel wasn’t stupid. “On two conditions, though.”

  His hand stopped moving. “It is you who are coming for help.”

  “Yeah, but if that info’s worth it, I want a piece of the action.”

  His hand began to lower. “This, I don’t know. I do not like needless complications.”

  “Tell me you can’t afford it.”

  “Tell me you really need it.”

  “It’s the principle, Mr. Tetsami.”

  He frowned at the use of his name. “And the other condition?”

  “If you’re taking those tickets, I want them replaced. I want to go to the game on Sunday.”

  • • •

  Angel slammed the door when she got home. Somehow she had managed to avoid running down any innocent bystanders.

  She had to ask Mr. K about Byron, and she had her suspicions about what she might have found out, but the truth had sliced her open like an unknown feline morey had sliced open Byron’s neck. What really pissed her off was the fact that her reaction meant that she was still harboring some secret delusions that her time with Byron had meant anything.

  What it had meant to Byron, apparently, was that she was a convenient mail drop.

  The really disgusting part of all this was the fact that, by the time he’d slipped her those cards, she’d been so gooey-eyed that she would have willingly stashed anything for him had he just asked.

  “What a fucking day.”

  “Angel—” Lei stepped out of the living room and walked up to her. Lei looked flustered and her tail was swatting so frantically that no shin within a meter of her would be safe. Angel barely noticed. She was fuming about Byron.

  “The bastard was using me! He always was. It was his effing MO. He handled this hot data, found some squeeze to get close to and planted the stuff till he wanted it—”

  “Angel—” Lei grabbed Angel’s shoulder and shook it.

  “What?” Angel snapped back.

  Lei cocked her head back into the room. Standing there, in Angel’s living room, was Detective White, belly spilling over his belt like an impending avalanche. White wasn’t smiling. Flanking him were two uniforms who looked a little nervous.

  Angel shouldered past Lei and looked the detective in the paunch. “What the fuck are you doing here again?”

  “I’m here to arrest you.”

  “What?”

  “Hit and run at Columbus and Washington at five fifteen this afternoon.”

  Chapter 14

  While the cops hassled her through the bureaucracy, Angel tried to isolate the moment at which her life started going wrong. It was an unprofitable pursuit because her thoughts traveled back from the current disaster in an unbroken chain of events that began two decades ago when her mom visited a Bens
heim clinic to get inseminated.

  That was depressing.

  No, she thought, what’s depressing is the fact I still need to find out who killed Byron, and the guy was an asshole, a con artist, and God knows what else—

  If their positions had been reversed, Angel was pretty sure that Byron wouldn’t be overly upset about her death. In fact, she had a morbid fantasy about what her funeral would be like. She could see Byron picking up Lei at the wake.

  It was upsetting that that half-blind lion, Balthazar, saw Byron clearer than she ever did.

  Her mind continued in its self-destructive spiral as she got more and more irritated with the cops.

  At least, for once, she actually had a lawyer to call when they gave her access to a comm. That screwed with their program a bit. Moreys weren’t supposed to have bail, or lawyers. When she called DeGarmo and told the cops to engage in some experimental hermaphroditism, they shuffled her away into a holding cell.

  With a bald human.

  From a logistical point of view, it had to be intentional on the cop’s part. The stainless steel gate on the cell slid aside and they tossed her into the bare concrete, and she knew they wanted some sort of incident so they could continue to hold her after her lawyer showed.

  Even though she knew it was what the cops wanted, she couldn’t help but saying, “Hey, it’s the firebug.”

  The small white human looked up at her for the first time.

  “Shit!” The female pink stood up and went over to the gate, giving Angel a wide berth, and began yelling, “You can’t put it in here with me—I’ve got rights!”

  “Pleased to see you, too, shithead.”

  “That rodent, it tried to kill me, you can’t—”

  “If you don’t watch your effing pronouns, I will kill you.”

  It soon became obvious to the pink that the cops weren’t particularly interested in her dilemma. She turned around to Angel, who had taken her spot on the one cot in the three-meter-square cell.

  “Stay away from me,” she said.

  Angel never realized how sleazy the smell of human fear could be. The fact that she’d touched this hairless wonder at one point made her want to wash her hands.

  “Ain’t moving, pinky.” Angel smiled. “But I hope you have a lot of self-control.” She looked at the john next to the cot.

  Pinky slid down, along the bars, until she was sitting on the ground. “You don’t touch me.”

  “Don’t worry, I don’t feel like spending an hour picking shit from my claws.”

  Pinky winced, even though rabbit claws weren’t much to worry about. “You just don’t touch me. I got friends.”

  “Yeah, I know. A bunch of screaming freakazoids with so much heat conduction from the head that they suffer brain damage. If you’re the best and the brightest, I don’t have much to worry about.”

  Pinky just sat there, glaring.

  Angel continued, “Stood outside the bar grinning until they picked you up, didn’t you? Scary example of the master race indeed. Kinda drafty up there, ain’t it?”

  Pinky was getting real pissed. It was getting damn close to the incident the cops wanted, and Angel was about at the point where she wouldn’t care. If the twitch jumped her, she could kick her through the bars and there’d be one less scumbag in the city. By all rights they should give her a medal for something like that.

  Pinky glared at her, but she was into self-preservation. “You keep talking. When we have the power, your kind will be swept aside.”

  “The Knights? You must be kidding!”

  “I’m not talking about . . .”

  It was amazing how quiet it could get down here. It was a new block of cells that smelled of machine oil and fresh concrete and only slightly of urine. Their nearest neighbors were two cells away.

  The near-silence—bullshit continued elsewhere in the block—was filled by the realization that Pinky had said something significant.

  It was like slow motion, as Angel swung her feet to the floor and Pinky pushed up to her feet.

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “Don’t come near me.”

  For the first time in a long time, Angel was aware of the new scar on her cheek. It was nearly invisible now, and she only felt it as a slight tightness on her face. She realized she felt it because she was grinning like a maniac. Angel could feel her heart pounding in her ears, and she hoped the smell of blood was from the scar opening up on her cheek.

  “You can tell.” She was approaching Pinky slowly, but she could feel the muscles in her legs tightening. “Just between you, me, and the hookers three cells down.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Who’s going to stop me, you freak? You’re so proud of your friends in high places. Why don’t you tell me who they are?”

  She backed Pinky up. It was beginning to hit her how silly the scene must look. After all, in the looking-fierce competition between moreaus, a lepus would come dead last.

  Even so, the bald twitch had a right to be scared. Angel was beginning to feel a real strong desire to tear something apart. Angel could feel the anger ratcheting her nerves tighter and tighter.

  Pinky found a corner and stuck. Angel closed on her. “Come on,” Angel said, “impress me with these friends.”

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “Must be a good reason they’re letting you all twist in the wind.”

  “Get away.”

  “Tell me—” Angel was now as close as she could get. Her toes were touching Pinky’s boots. She slowly raised her heels and tilted forward until she had raised her muzzle level with Pinky’s face. “Tell me these people and I’ll leave you alone. Roll over. Looks like something you’d be good at.”

  Angel stood there staring at the twitch. Pinky stayed quiet.

  “No? Do you want a description?” Angel leaned in. Her smile still hurt. She was shaking with the restrained desire to go fully off on Pinky’s bald little head. Angel was reminded of the scene with Igalez. Never mind, she could handle it. “First, I eat your nose.” She dragged her tongue across Pinky’s face, tasting sweat and fear.

  As Angel licked across the bridge of her nose, Pinky’s eyes rolled up and she emitted an inarticulate moan. She shoved Angel away and threw herself at the bars. “Get me out of here! Just get me out of here! I’ll admit to anything, just get me away from that animal!”

  Angel was about to say something more—perhaps even jump Pinky and show the twitch a real animal—but at that moment all hell broke loose in the cell block. All the empty cells opened simultaneously, and cops in riot gear started pushing in a mass of moreaus of both sexes. The cops lined themselves up against the wall, holding up stun rods—a sort of glorified cattle prod—as a wall of fur washed past the cell.

  Damn, Angel thought, these weren’t gang members, or the kind of folks she expected to see in such a roust. For one thing, the moreys wore too much clothing. There was a definite linear equation that related income level with the amount of pink clothing a morey wore. Angel actually saw a few ties.

  Most of the moreys looked to have been through some rough treatment. A few were bleeding, and one or two had to be helped along. The smell of urine was being overpowered by the smell of wet fur and blood.

  Angel’s body stopped screaming for combat, and the tension started to leak away from her muscles.

  Pinky freaked, especially when the passing moreaus began to notice her.

  “Oh, God, I’m gonna die.” She crawled into a fetal position under the cot.

  “I suppose,” Angel said, as she rubbed an ache in her thigh. “If you’re lucky.”

  The tide of moreaus let up for a few minutes, and a pair of cops pushed through to the door of their cell. The door slid open.

  “My lawyer here?” Angel wanted to get the hell out of this place.

 
“I know fuck about your lawyer, rabbit,” said one of the cops. “This just became a segregated cell block.”

  The other cop reached in and got his arm around the firebug’s chest. “Come on, Berkeley. You’re getting transferred in with some of your friends.”

  Pinky began kicking and screaming. “You aren’t going to take me out there!” One kick landed in the other officer’s crotch. The cop was in full riot gear and it only pissed him off.

  “Cuff her!” he told the other cop as he grabbed both legs. They left the cell in less than five minutes, Pinky trussed up between them like a Christmas present.

  They barely cleared the cell door before Angel’s cell began filling up with more wet moreaus. Angel immediately lost sight of the big picture, suddenly being surrounded by taller people. All she had a chance to do was claim the section of cot next to the john before the place got too full to move.

  Though she couldn’t see her progress, Angel could hear the firebug make her exit. Pinky left on a crest of moreau growls and insults and a buzz or two from the cop stunners—apparently when someone wasn’t quite satisfied with verbal abuse.

  There was a rush into the cell, then Angel’s world stabilized somewhat. She was surrounded by a mixed group of canines plus one of the occasional exotic breeds that she hadn’t seen before.

  The exotic was the closest to her height, shorter and looking like a cross between a rabbit and a rat, so she addressed him.

  “Raining out there?”

  He shook his head. “No, they’re using fire hoses.”

  Apparently, two conflicting demonstrations, pink and morey, happened to meet in front of City Hall. Predictably, bad things happened. From the description, a melee erupted in the lobby of City Hall itself, causing a shitload of damage from the fight and more so from the firehoses they used to quell the violence.

  The cops ended up busting everyone in a five block radius.

  The exotic, a chinchilla, hadn’t even been a part of the demonstration. He’d just been driving down Van Ness when the cops stopped him. Angel just had the dumb luck to get embedded in what must be a logistic nightmare for the Frisco legal system. A tidal wave of moreaus washed in, only to leave by an anemic trickle.